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ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the US

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Re: ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the US

#11

Post by lend000 »

cup wrote: post #2

Disgusting development and a horrible example of how destructive technology can be. This reinforces my belief that engineers and scientist need to go through mandatory ethics classes throughout their education.

While I agree this is horrible, mandatory ethics would have zero effect because:

1. Some people will need jobs. 2. Ethics are subjective. 3. Some people won't care.

The correct solution would be in trying to vote in less authoritarian politicians. Americans haven't done a very good job of that over the last century.

Re: ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the US

#12

Post by FLUX-YOU »

lend000 wrote: post #11
cup wrote: post #2

Disgusting development and a horrible example of how destructive technology can be. This reinforces my belief that engineers and scientist need to go through mandatory ethics classes throughout their education.

While I agree this is horrible, mandatory ethics would have zero effect because: 1. Some people will need jobs. 2. Ethics are subjective. 3. Some people won't care. The correct solution would be in trying to vote in less authoritarian politicians. Americans haven't done a very good job of that over the last century.

>1. Some people will need jobs.

People are probably less likely to stand up when economic inequality widens and they have a cozy software engineer position.

Re: ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the US

#14

Post by mschuster91 »

lend000 wrote: post #11
cup wrote: post #2

Disgusting development and a horrible example of how destructive technology can be. This reinforces my belief that engineers and scientist need to go through mandatory ethics classes throughout their education.

While I agree this is horrible, mandatory ethics would have zero effect because: 1. Some people will need jobs. 2. Ethics are subjective. 3. Some people won't care. The correct solution would be in trying to vote in less authoritarian politicians. Americans haven't done a very good job of that over the last century.

> The correct solution would be in trying to vote in less authoritarian politicians.

That requires a system where people actually have a meaningful vote... e.g. it's impossible in China, and for what its worth Chinese ethics are way, way different than typical Western-sourced ethics.

In the US, the ability of people to have a meaningful vote has been largely dismantled by a number of bad factors:

1) gerrymandering leading to situations where a Democrat won't run in a Republican stronghold (or, less often, the other way around)

2) the Electoral College leading to a situation where despite losing the popular vote, the respective candidate does win the presidency (as happened with Trump and I believe also with George W)

3) states with "fixed" political leanings get largely ignored and campaigning largely takes place in contested/swing states.

4) voter disenfranchisement: in Germany, voting is generally on Sundays as most people do not have to work on weekends, thus improving turnout compared to the US where voting is on a Tuesday for whatever reason; also in the US there are all sorts of measures to make it harder for poor or minority people to vote, including weird arbitrary ID requirements.

Re: ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the US

#16

Post by pavel_lishin »

Is it possible to fight back by poisoning the data? Is it legal to set up a display by the roadside that shows randomly generated license plates, filling their automated cameras with garbage data? Or is their data collection smart enough to recognize a non-car, either technologically or by filtering everything through a Turk-like equivalent?

Re: ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the US

#17

Post by userbinator »

tptacek wrote: post #5
EduardoBautista wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who gets to determine what is considered ethical?

In general, the individual engineers do. The point of ethics training is to recognize that you have ethical obligations that extend past your job responsibilities, and that when your ethics conflict with your work tasks, it's not your ethics that should compromise. For some of us, that might mean not working on a project that we could reasonably foresee would result in the deportation of children who don't speak Span…

For some of us, that might mean not working on a project that we could reasonably foresee would result in the deportation of children who don't speak Spanish and have only ever known this country to some foreign country. For others, it might mean not working on projects that assist women in obtaining an abortion.

Unfortunately it seems a lot of engineers either don't have much in the way of ethics, or truly believe what they're doing is good. See all those willing to implement things like invasive telemetry, DRM, and walled gardens, for example. The "security" argument is pervasive and very convincing to those who don't realise that it's also a way for companies to enforce more control over its users.

This also brings up another point: if you had to choose between not working on a project that goes against your ethics (leaving others to drive it toward its undesirable-to-you goal), or work on it but silently subvert it (as in subtly break it or otherwise impede its progress), which one would be the more ethical thing to do? In other words, "do everything you're told, just some things better than others"? Maybe I'm just optimistic, but the existence of jailbreaks, rooting, and flaws discovered in DRM schemes really make me want to believe that the latter exist.

Re: ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the US

#18

Post by CoryG89 »

cup wrote: post #2

Disgusting development and a horrible example of how destructive technology can be. This reinforces my belief that engineers and scientist need to go through mandatory ethics classes throughout their education.

For the record, I did have to take two ethics classes to get my BS in software engineering. One was an introductory ethics class mostly focusing on philosophy and ethical theories, the other was a class focusing on ethics as pertaining specifically to technology.

Re: ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the US

#19

Post by ams6110 »

maxxxxx wrote: post #9
cup wrote: post #2

Disgusting development and a horrible example of how destructive technology can be. This reinforces my belief that engineers and scientist need to go through mandatory ethics classes throughout their education.

I am sure a lot of people working on this stuff think they are doing something to secure their country and this is the ethical thing to do.

For that matter (and not to equate the two) people working in concentration camps thought they were serving their country and doing the right thing also. The point is we cannot rely on the ethics of the people doing it to stop it.

Re: ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the US

#20

Post by pdkl95 »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #16

Is it possible to fight back by poisoning the data? Is it legal to set up a display by the roadside that shows randomly generated license plates, filling their automated cameras with garbage data? Or is their data collection smart enough to recognize a non-car, either technologically or by filtering everything through a Turk-like equivalent?

(pdf) https://www.defcon.org/images/defcon-21/dc-21-presentations/...
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